Fishing: No sign of big blues, but there is good news

Charles Walsh

Updated 11:45 pm, Saturday, May 17, 2014

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Short castsSTRIPER NEWS: Speaking of striped bass, the old morone saxatillis have been getting more than their share of media attention lately. A spate of articles and op-ed pieces on the diminishing striper stocks were engendered by Tuesday's meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. At that meeting, commission members heard arguments for and against slashing the annual striper harvest along the East Coast range by as much as one-third. One thing is for sure: Some cut in the striper limit is sure to come in 2015. Last year, commercial fishers took 5.8 million pounds of striped bass. By comparison, recreational angers took some 25 million pounds along the entire East Coast with a good percentage of that total coming from Long Island Sound. Which group will feel the largest pinch when the cuts are announced? You do the math.-- CHARLES WALSH

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Subdued was the mood at the Friday morning Catch Clatch around the glass counters at Jimmy O's Bait & Tackle in Black Rock.

It wasn't only the glum, overcast weather that suppressed the group's usual optimism about the fishing ahead.

A report from two of the area's most dedicated (and earliest) blue fishers who had already made a couple of unsuccessful jigging forays to deeper water of Long Island Sound in search of choppers proved only that the blues had yet to show their teeth in local waters. While it has not happened in recent years, some of the anglers leaning on Jimmy's glass vividly recall the not-so-bygone days when by mid-May, 10-pound bluefish crashed surface bait at places like Penfield Reef and the tombolo bar at Milford's Charles Island.

The atmosphere brightened somewhat when Jimmy brought up the subject of schoolie striped bass and their spring movement along the beaches. Anglers at Penfield and Southport harbor are having a ball catch-and-releasing the 18- to 24-inch stripers on small plastic shad jigs and yellow stick baits, he said. Despite the linesider exodus to open water, Jimmy said that the Housatonic River is still yielding a few stripers to persistent anglers, including a pair who made their way on foot to the now-closed state boat ramp under the I-95 bridge in Milford after work had stopped on the new bridge. The keeper-class fish hit cast swim baits as night was falling.

The mood elevated even further when Jimmy said he'd been getting more than the usual number of winter flounder weigh-ins over the past seven days, including one that tipped the scales at 2.67 pounds. That flattie would have been an average flounder 10 years ago, but it is a whopper by current standards. More cheering news: Fluke season opened Saturday.

Then Jimmy placed his elbows on the counter and in a whispery, conspiratorial voice gave what may have been the best news of the morning: bunker, yes menhaden, those oily royalty of Long Island Sound baitfish, had been spotted in Black Rock harbor and a couple of other locations. Once, the slightest hint that bunker had arrived from their oceanic winter hiatus was a rock-solid indicator that larger predators, blues, bass and maybe even some weakfish, would soon be moving to fatten up on the easy picking. But in the past few seasons, massive schools of bunker have swum brazenly through local harbors as if they owned them. Predators? What predators? Still, even brazen bunker was better that no bunker at all.

Finally, Jimmy, after a few moments of quiet consideration, sat straight up on his stool.

"All in all, guys," he said like a preacher concluding a sermon, "I'd say we are off to a pretty promising start to the season."

All members of the Catch Clatch nodded in agreement with the summary of the morning's discussions. In minutes, only Jimmy was leaning on the glass counter.